Chez Uhuru
228 Musgrave Road
iThekwini
To:Dr Essop Pahad
The Presidency
Union Buildings
Tshwane
Dear Dr Pahad, I am pleased to report that my career is implacably on track. Although the steps I have taken on my path to power have been tentative ones, I am confident that I am closer to the goal than when I first wrote to you.
On Saturday I was in the CNA at Musgrave Centre and was privileged to participate in the market-clearing event of a sale of unwanted books to be disposed of at discounts of up to 75%. For a mere R25 (less than the cheapest blended Scotch) I picked up a book on our leader The Mbeki Inheritance by that steadfast champion of business from BJ Vorster’s time, Raymond Parsons. I cannot adequately express the sense of assurance which I, as a reborn apostle of the free market, felt on opening Parsons’s text to the page at which he expresses “hopeful thoughts” that our leader, once freed from the “doctrinaire shackles” of the alliance, may “show himself to be at heart a democrat in the mould of Margaret Thatcher or would Ted Heath be closer to the mark?” As I tendered my money, it struck me how those years in exile had instilled in our leader values that would sustain Brittania’s invisible grip through the winds of change. I think the idea of a world order managed by adoptive Anglo-Saxon sons is to be credited to Cecil John Rhodes and is the rationale for his scholarships. But these insights, as much as they make for peaceful sleep and a sense of lucrative possibility, are not among the factors which mark my progress in political terms. Just as our leader speaks of destiny, I am sure that it was pre-ordained that I would discover in the depths of the bargain bin, beneath a discounted copy of I Married a Communist, a pocket-sized booklet entitled Weddings, for a mere R10. It is a text which, like The Little Red Book of yore, I am disciplining myself to bear at all times. I have gone straight for the chapter headed The Best Man and have been trying to memorise its contents. The best part is the section on the stag night. I envied you as I read that “it is probably one of the best man’s more pleasurable duties to arrange the stag night” and that, although traditionally the occasion is on the wedding eve, nowadays it is some days before “because the event usually involves a certain amount of drinking, and the time lapse gives the groom the chance to get over it before the wedding day itself”. It strikes me that whereas the wedding ceremony itself and many of the other nuptial rituals are not likely to be repeated, the stag night has features that can be experienced repeatedly for decades, well beyond the night on which such excesses are given formal status. The bender is an event that, with time and practise, can only improve, particularly as more mature and seasoned participants bring greater budgetary capacity to the party. Although I have never underestimated the responsibilities of the best man, I must say that I was a little daunted, and frankly in awe of you, when I read that “if the groom insists on celebrating the night before, then the best man has the task of getting him home in a fit state to face his wedding. The best man can be sure that he, as well as the groom, will incur the wrath of the bride (and her mother) if the groom is not feeling fit on the day.” I am going to need some tips from you on pacing myself and the groom, recovery periods and rehabilitative remedies.
I have no doubt that the position you continue to occupy behind the right shoulder of our leader is testimony to your organisational attributes in getting him to the right place at the right time, with the capacity to perform. Perhaps it is this conjugal episode that is at the very foundation of our leader’s reputation as “the consummate charmer”. I see that after I wrote to you on February 2 2001 you had to stand in for our leader the next Monday to deliver an address at a banquet for Tony O’Reilly’s guests at The Castle. What a venue! I hear that they stock 20-year-old KWV. I do hope they didn’t operate a cash bar on the night.
The press have been most unfair in suggesting that the guests were shocked to have the keynote address delivered not by our leader, but by you. I can say that, in my experience, a speech delivered by the best man, undistracted by impending demands of performance and the apprehension of commitment, is invariably more entertaining and memorable than anything the groom ever says. When I read your Castle speech I felt proud. In years to come, when people think of epoch-making quotations, the name Essop Pahad will spring readily to mind in the same company as Martin Luther King, JFK and, to be fair, Saddam Hussein. Churchill’s tribute to “the few” sounds woefully second-rate as one reads your words: “I don’t believe in the history of this country we have had such a systematic, vile and vicious campaign against the head of state.” Indeed! As you remind us, the government cannot be expected to remain silent when it is criticised. Our enemies must understand that, to cite your words, their “philippic”, “bitter”, “monstrously distasteful”, “ill-considered” and “systematic undermining of our leader” will not be tolerated. We must, however, give your vision practical expression. The presidency is being subjected to a total onslaught and we must devise a total strategy to deal with our foes. I have a couple of options in mind. The first is to upgrade the Government Communication and Information System to provide for all news reports, editorials and columns that comment on the president to be submitted for approval. Although your current post, without responsibility for any state department, affords you spare capacity, I fear that the task of reading and correcting media copy may swamp you, diverting you from dealing with unpatriotic activities in other spheres. I think that a suitably effective form of regulation would be for the Government Communication and Information System to require all journalists to register and be subject to a disciplinary code. Where material is found to lack balance, the offending journalist must be suspended, but in the spirit of press freedom should be afforded the opportunity to be rehabilitated upon the submission of material that is adjudicated to be both positive and correct in its evalu-ation of the performance of the presidency. I believe that in this way we can cast the onus on the press to demonstrate the qualities of loyalty and obedience that are indispensable pre- requisites of freedom. Do you want me to draft the legislation? Any news on prospective grooms? Yours in the struggle against the vile and the vicious. Craig Tanner